Monday, January 19, 2009

The king has left the building

There is an article in the Times of India today about "Mansions" beginning to empty due to layoffs. For the uninitiated, "mansions" in Chennai are not castles where kings and lords live, but inexpensive, mostly dingy, cramped bachelor pads housing hundreds of men (mostly) working (again, mostly) in the IT and ITES sectors.

What is interesting is that, while there are reports of visible after-effects of layoffs, there is as yet no report on which companies are doing the laying off. Neither companies, it seems, nor the laidoff employees want the world to know that there are layoffs happening!

For companies, it is the worry of political backlash that is stopping them from going public about retrenchment and for the employees it is the social stigma associated with being laid off.

Kind of a strange win-win situation - in reverse! Just like in the case of "Slumdog Millionaire", we seem to have this overpowering desire to deny the obvious and hope that nobody finds out!